I had a canopy bed when I was little. White frame, lavender bedding that eventually became lime green and blue. It was fluffy and grand and the canopy was bigger than I was. I picked it out myself.
I spent a lot of time in it.
I was what adults called an easy kid. Mature for my age. Good with grown-ups. The sturdy one. What I understand now is that I had simply learned that there was no outsourcing my okayness. It's what worked for me. So I got very good at not needing anyone to help me with it.
What I did instead was get in my bed, under the canopy, and turn on the TV.
I'd put on Laguna Beach, The Hills, shows full of girls who seemed to know exactly who they were, and I'd slip into them like a change of clothes. Not a fantasy. Something more specific than that. A realistic life, just an entirely different one than mine.
What I understand now, that I couldn't then, is that I wasn't drawn to Lauren Conrad because I wanted her life. I was drawn to her because she got to be the main character of her own. She was seen. I was somewhere offscreen, making sure everyone else's scene ran smoothly.
Recently, someone asked me to go back to that room.
To picture myself there — on the bed, under the canopy, TV on. And then to imagine walking back through the door as who I am now. Slowly. Gently. And sitting down next to her.
I pictured myself asking if she was okay.
She said she was fine.
I told her it was okay not to be.
She doubled down.
I hugged her. She didn't hug back.
And I understood completely. I'm fine was the only answer she knew how to give. Even when someone who loved her was asking. Even when that someone was her.
What cracked something open wasn't the conversation. It was picturing the kids I love — my nephews, my friends' kids — and imagining one of them on that bed. Doing what she was doing. Checked out, unreachable, going through the motions of okay.
I knew immediately what I'd want for them. I wouldn't try to fix it or talk them through it or fast-forward past it. I'd get in the bed with them. Sit up against the headboard. Watch whatever they were watching. Maybe get ice cream after. Just be there, inside it with them, without making it a thing.
She needed someone to just be in it with her.
That's the part that stayed with me. Not the memories — those have always felt matter-of-fact to me, like a closed file, like looking at a photograph of someone I used to know. But the simplicity of what she actually needed. Not rescue. Not a reframe. Just presence. Just someone who made her feel like what was happening to her counted.
The sanctuary looks different now. Then it was a place to disappear. Now it's something closer to an embrace — the throw pillows, the blankets, the warmth, all of it. A matured, healthier version of a hideaway. I'm still not great at being held. But I'm learning to let the room do it first. A few more thousand dollars in therapy, and maybe eventually I'll let people do it too.
I'm still building it — the life around me, and the one inside me. While I figure it out, here's what's making it into the rotation, and a few more I'm still working toward, tangibly and otherwise.